


don't you forget about me

by deathrae



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Sacrifice Maxine "Max" Caulfield, a quick look at what a Sacrifice Max ending could have looked like, also because for some reason 'trauma study' fic is a trademark of mine, because I hate joy or something, endgame spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-06-07 10:54:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15217628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathrae/pseuds/deathrae
Summary: She’d always liked games, but this one really sucked.





	don't you forget about me

**Author's Note:**

> Somehow, incomprehensibly, "sacrifice max" never occurred to me until a friend of mine was playing LiS for the first time and mentioned that's where she thought it was going SOOOOO naturally I promptly replayed it and slammed down almost 4k words on the topic.

The storm was impossible. E6 tornadoes didn’t just hit random bits of Oregon coastline, and they didn’t look like this, not _really_ , that much Max was pretty damn sure of. The rain whipped across her body like tiny knives, not quite sleet but trying to be. _When I grow up, I wanna be..._  Like little kids playing at adulthood. (And wasn’t that all they were, really, this whole week long?) The sky, what little of it she could see through the clouds and the rain and the wind, was a sickly greenish-grey, and it made her think of a corpse, even though that wasn’t quite the right color.

 _I really don’t like feeling like this_ , she thought, again, just like she had at the party. _Dark and angry. And really_ fucking _morbid._

She was so lost in her own brain she almost missed what Chloe was saying, but some part of her—some huge part of her—couldn’t ever _not_ listen when Chloe was talking. Except then Chloe let go of her shoulders and stepped back. She didn’t think it was on purpose, really, but Chloe always put distance between her and whoever was around her when she was upset. That’s all this was, when it came down to it.

The photo looked blurrier than usual when she started focusing on the jump.

But then again, it _was_ the first time she’d tried to jump while crying.

 

The clicking of her camera’s shutter as she took the photograph of the butterfly was deafening. So loud it echoed in the empty bathroom. She pulled out her journal, frantically scribbling on the last page she’d used, trying to capture the important points of what had just happened. Maybe it seemed callous, to be writing at a time like this, but later she didn’t want to forget—and regret—why she’d made this choice.

This awful, awful choice.

Why had the universe even given her these stupid time powers if it was just going to beat her down and tell her she wasn’t supposed to use them?

What had even been the point? Why bother playing this stupid game with her, offer her a way to get Chloe back, over and over, only to take her away all over again at the end? Save the town, or save a girl. No. _The_ girl.

She’d always liked games, but this one really sucked.

And then it hit her like a slap. A flashbulb flare in the dark.

_Sometimes the only way to win is not to play._

She added one last note to her journal and tucked it away just as the bathroom door opened. She wouldn’t get a redo this time. She had to time this perfectly.

She listened as Chloe came into the room. Listened as Chloe smacked open the bathroom stall doors to check for eavesdroppers.

This time, more so than any other, the irony hit her. How many times had this moment played out, and Chloe’d never, not once, actually checked the rest of the bathroom.

She listened as they argued.

And then she made her move.

Some part of her brain processed the next twenty seconds in a series of snapshot images. Like the ones taped up all over her dorm room wall.

Nathan pressing Chloe back and brandishing the pistol, a handgun disguised as a power fantasy.

Max’s shoes squeaking on the tiles as she darted around the corner.

Chloe’s eyes blowing wide as she saw Max over Nathan’s shoulder. “What—?”

Max’s voice echoing on the tiles. “Hey _asshole!”_

Her hand grabbing Nathan’s elbow and yanking.

Nathan’s body pivoting as she pulled him around.

The gun, dark and horrible and so _big_ , filling the space between them like a spectre of death.

 _Bang_.

The gun going off was like a tiny cannon, echoing and reverberating off all the walls and plumbing until it sounded like so much more than it was.

For a second it didn’t even hurt, exactly. And then all of the panic signals shot through her body and slammed into her brain and she registered them all, all at once. A tidal wave of red alerts sparking across all her synapses, lighting her head up with _danger, danger, severe damage, systems failure possible_.

Her brain was panicking, trying to process too many things at once. She felt everything else dimly, as if it was in the distance. She staggered back a step until her shoulders and head touched the door of a stall and pushed it open. Her back hit a second after and she slid down to the floor, toppling back onto the tile. Some part of her brain registered a flash of blue against the wall, too vibrant to be paint. Nathan’s bright red jacket twisted and warped as he moved, and he stumbled out through the door. Gone, gone, gone.

It hurt. God, it hurt so bad. It hurt to move, it hurt to lie still. It hurt to breathe.

 _Come on Max_ , she thought, staring up at the ceiling of the bathroom. _You took Bio. What was it called. Something-thorax. Pneumothorax? No, that’s not it. Hemothorax?_

“Holy shit, _holy shit_ ,” someone was saying. “Max? _Maxine fucking Caulfield_ if that’s you– I swear to god, what the _shit_ , what’d you do that for, _oh my_ _god_.”

Right. Chloe.

Hm, maybe this plan hadn’t been super well thought out. Then again, had any of them been? That’s why she was in this mess at all. For half a second it occurred to her to rewind again. Maybe there was a way to do this so Chloe didn’t have to watch her die.

No, no, if she rewound now the storm would still come.

Then again, probably if she rewound again, she’d just be bleeding out on the floor anyway. She’d never been affected by the rewinds. She’d be bleeding on the floor and it’d make even less sense without the bullet. No. Bullet was better. That way Nathan could get busted for it.

“Max what the _hell_ , what the hell are you babbling about.”

Oh. She’d said that aloud?

“Max, _Max_. Talk to me, come on.”

She forced her eyes to work and pushed the panic signals aside enough to let her optic nerves actually have a say. Chloe’s face swam into focus over her, her wide eyes shiny and wet with fear, thick tufts of blue hair sticking out around the edge of her hat. Chloe’s hands pressed a little harder against her chest, trying to stop the bleeding. She felt it, but only at the edges of her awareness.

“Chloe,” Max whispered, and she felt her mouth twist in a smile.

“Max what the _fuck_.”

“I’m sorry,” Max said. Chloe just stared. Maybe it only made sense to her. “I’m so sorry, for ev– for everything. I know this isn’t what you asked me to do but I had to. I had to. You said save everybody but I _had_ to save you too, don’t you see?”

“Max.” Chloe’s voice cracked and now there were actual tears on her face. That wasn’t right. Max reached up and brushed her fingers across Chloe’s face. Chloe froze, then leaned into her touch. Just a little, like a shy, love-starved puppy. Like she was expecting to wake up from a nightmare. Like for once she didn’t care if anyone saw how much pain she was in. Her tantrums had always only been performative, a smokescreen, a farce to see who would break through the fake layers of pain to find the real ones buried so deep even Chloe herself didn’t know how far down they went. “What the fuck are you talking about. Where did you even _come_ from...”

“Storm won’t come,” Max said, and sighed. She was so tired. She was so tired, and it all hurt so much. It had been hurting for days and she hadn’t even noticed all of it. It had just kept coming, more and more, a little at a time, like boiling a frog. She’d barely noticed the pressure and the fear and the grief until it was all too much. She tried to take another breath but it _hurt_. It hurt so much. All she got was a little wheeze. Enough for a few more words. “You’ll be safe.”

“Max.”

“Sorry,” she mumbled. It was so hard to get enough air. Things were starting to go a little blurred, darkness coming in at the edges of her vision like a camera wildly out of focus. “You should—you should go. B’fore cops come.”

“I’m not leaving you alone,” Chloe said, all fire and teenage rage.

“I didn’t want to leave you,” Max said.

“Stop fucking _talking_ , Max, you nerd, save your breath.”

“Didn’t want to then.”

She couldn’t see much, and what she did see she didn’t think she could see very well, but she felt Chloe’s forehead press to hers. “I know.”

“Don’t want to now. I wanted to stay, I promise.”

“Then _stay_.” She felt tears drip onto her face. _Plip, plip_. Like a leaking faucet in the middle of the night. _Plip_.

“Have to, Chlo’.”

“Max—”

“’M sorry.”

She could still taste rain and Chloe’s chapstick on her lips.

 _Sorry William_ , she thought, and closed her eyes. _Guess I broke my promise after all._

 

* * *

 

Chloe felt numb. No, that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t that she felt nothing, it was that she felt so much she was fried, overloaded and blue-screened like her laptop. She felt confused, she felt afraid, she felt the loud, frantic buzz of the beginnings of grief, she felt... god, what _didn’t_ she feel, that’d be a shorter list.

She didn’t remember screaming. Surely she was too numb to scream.

Later, David would tell her that the gunshot brought him running, but it was her scream that told him where to look.

Maybe it was good she was so confused, so full of pain she couldn’t find the edges where it stopped. She was too out of it to be mean to David. She couldn’t be bothered to lie or act like anything other than devastated and on the wrong side of shock.

Maybe that was why when he burst into the bathroom and found her, sitting with Max half in her lap, blood on her shirt and her hands and her face and tears tracking clean streaks across her skin, he just looked at her and crouched down till his eyes were on a level with hers.

“Chloe. _Chloe_. Talk to me. What happened.”

“He shot her,” she whispered. “Oh my god. Nathan shot her. He was gonna shoot me and she was _there_ somehow and she– she turned him around... he shot her instead. Oh my god. He shot her instead of me.”

Maybe it was good she looked like she did, because against all sense, he actually seemed to believe her.

Maybe he recognized it, the look on her face. What would he call it. Shell-shock?

Survivor’s guilt?

She didn’t much care what it was called. It hurt too much to care about semantics.

David left again and she finally looked down. Max’s shirt was soaked with blood and there was a pool of it around them on the floor, staining Chloe’s jeans and Max’s jacket. She reached down and tugged at Max’s bag, pulling it up out of the blood. The edges were wet but it looked like it hadn’t soaked through the canvas yet. Maybe that was a weird thing to care about, but right then it was the only thing she _could_ seem to care about.

In Max’s hand she saw a polaroid, clutched so tight it was curling doubled-over in the cage of Max’s fingers. She pried it loose. It was gorgeous, if simple. A blue butterfly sitting on a janitor’s bucket, the tile floor behind it a bit out of focus.

Wait.

It was _this_ tile floor.

Chloe looked toward the corner where Max had come from. Had she just been there, taking a photograph when Nathan came into the bathroom? Chloe looked down again.

God, Max had always been small when they were kids, and it was still true, even after all these years. But now it was all she could see. Those little hands, her little nose, her little mouth. She was like a child, somehow, and it occurred to Chloe how _young_ they were. Max had only just turned 18, and yet here she was, lying sprawled on a bathroom floor in jeans she probably bought in the little boys’ section of Target. The hole in the left side of her chest looked disproportionately huge compared to the rest of her. It wasn’t even that big, objectively. Barely the size of a nickel.

Maybe it only seemed huge to Chloe. Something that could kill a teenager should be bigger than a coin, shouldn’t it?

She tugged open Max’s bag. Inside was a few odds and ends—that dumb pencil bag Chloe’d got for her when Max was 10, her photography textbook, a beat up old camera—and her journal. At a loss for what else to do, Chloe tugged the journal out of the bag. One cover was wet with blood.

 _Guess the canvas saturated after all_ , she thought, distant and dismal.

She flipped it open to the most recent page. October 11th.

No, that was impossible. Today was the 7th.

Chloe flipped a few pages earlier, trying to find today’s date.

It showed up more than once.

 _What the_ _fuck?_

She put the picture in her pocket and tucked the journal into the back of her jeans, under her jacket, like a pistol. It was Max’s. Maybe that meant it was evidence. But she couldn’t let them have it. The journal somehow, she was sure, held the secrets of the absolute nightmare that had just unfolded right in front of her. She needed to know what was going on, and if she gave away the journal she’d never see it again.

David came back, and the cops arrived eventually. David tugged her aside, standing with her to wait as they buzzed around like worker bees and eventually took down statements. His hand on her shoulder should’ve made her flinch and grimace and shove him off but now it felt a little bit real, a little bit grounding. The heat and sheer human _weight_ of him standing behind her was the only thing that made her feel alive and solid. A length of thin cord tethering her to the ground like a kite.

Only when they finally left, taking Max’s tiny, broken body with them, did she start to wake up, like she’d fallen asleep standing.

“Chloe.”

She blinked and realized David was looking at her again.

“Chloe. I have to deal with this. You’ve gotta go.”

“I’m banned, I know.”

“No,” he said, and tilted his head until she made eye contact, _real_ eye contact. “Go out the back way. Reporters’ll show soon, if they haven’t already. Don’t let ‘em box you in. Just go. They can’t stop you leavin’.”

“Oh,” she said, and blinked a few more times. Her eyes were burning. “Yeah. Okay.”

No one stopped her in the hallway, but a lot of people stared. She was used to that. She’d come to relish that. You didn’t dye your hair blue, tattoo most of your arm, and kiss girls in the open if you didn’t at least a _little bit_ want the attention of people staring at you like they don’t know what to make of you.

Now, though, she was hyperconscious of the fact that people weren’t staring at her.

They were looking at her, sure, but not at _her_. They were looking at the blood. Max’s blood. Smears of red sticking to her like ectoplasm, the last physical remnants of a ghost that had been carted away on a gurney.

Distantly, it occurred to her she ought wash it off. But for the moment she couldn’t bear to. She still had the journal, but washing her hands, her face, was to lose yet more proof that Max had really been here.

Chloe wiped her palms on her pants and climbed into her truck. Her fingers felt cold on the steering wheel, and she started the engine in a daze.

The junkyard was a graveyard for everything she’d ever loved. She didn’t think she could handle it just now. So she drove to the only other place she could think of where she could go and be alone.

Only once she was on the path up to the lighthouse did she pull Max’s journal out from the back of her jeans. She trudged up the path, winding along between the rickety old fences and the gloomy foliage, not registering any of it. She clutched the journal to her chest. Even now she half expected someone to snatch it from her.

The climb wasn’t bad but when she reached the top she collapsed onto the bench overlooking the bay. She felt too heavy, too raw. She felt like an exposed nerve, primed for a shock of liquid agony. Her lungs burned with the effort of moving her uncooperative, clumsy limbs. It was almost like being high, except somehow a thousand times worse.

The town lay below her, small and far away.

She opened the journal, flipping through the entries. Several dozen snapshots were stuffed into the pages, some beautiful, some nonsensical, some flat-out impossible. She tried not to drop any of them, especially not the one of her and Max together in her bed.

She tried to focus on piecing together Max’s story, starting with the first time October 7th appeared in the book. She read about her own death. She read about rewritten timelines, about missing girls and kisses and lies and broken hearts. About alternate timelines, about hidden bunkers, about guns and booze and a swimming pool in the dark.

Max’s grief, at having to do the incomprehensible, to watch Chloe die some twenty or thirty different times just to save her, was exactly as agonizing as it was obvious.

Max’s defiance, in the face of a universe that seemed to be saying _Chloe Price must die_ and was doing its level best to make her accept it, made it hard for Chloe to keep reading.

And Max’s love, for a girl who had done her level best to push Max away as payback for five years of silence, practically leapt off the page, as bright and vibrant as a midnight sunrise. That love, that adoration and affection and concern, clawed up Chloe’s jacket till it could wrap little fingers made of paper and ink around her throat and _squeeze_.

She read all of that, feeling numb and cold and unworthy of what Max had done for her, had gone through, _for her_. She read about the drugs, and Jefferson, and Nathan, and she felt sick and furious and suddenly, terribly aware that what had happened to her after she and Nathan left the bar had been _so_ close to what he’d done to Rachel. It made her chest hurt to even think about.

But most of all, hiding in doodles and notes and terrified scribbles in the margins, Chloe read about the storm. Chaos Theory at its finest. Shit.

She looked out at Arcadia Bay again and imagined it as it might have looked that day. The 11th, a day that was coming and yet somehow never would. She could almost picture it—a massive waterspout roaring toward land, sucking boats out of the water and pulling up power lines and wood and concrete as easily as a child pulling apart Legos.

She tried to imagine how different things would’ve been, if Max had just let the storm take the city. If Max had said _fuck it_ and decided to stay with her in that awful hellscape of a timeline. They’d be alone, and all of her own family would be dead. Was that better? Was that preferable to this?

She could almost imagine herself on that particular October 11th. Glad to be alive, satisfied in the knowledge that Max still cared no matter what else had happened, that Max cared enough to save her life over and over and over. Staring death in the face and offering herself in exchange for an entire town full of lives. In exchange for Max’s safety.

 _Hell is empty,_ she thought, watching waves lap against the shore of the bay. _And all the devils are here._

Max had left her alone. Again. But somehow, the unrepentant _spite_ of it made Chloe want to laugh, rather than to curse her name. It was so unlike the Max she’d known. It was the exact kind of _fuck you universe_ that Chloe herself would have so liked to pull. She was actually kind of proud, even though it still hurt like a bitch.

Chloe waited on the bench by the lighthouse, and a tiny part of her hoped that maybe that un-Oregonian October snow would still come, heralding the oncoming time-traveler’s maelstrom. Maybe if it came and destroyed the town anyway, she wouldn’t have to live with the knowledge that tomorrow the sun would rise on a world without Max Caulfield in it. Just like it had five years ago, but this time for real.

She waited for an hour, then two, until the sun started going down, out of golden hour and into true dusk.

The snow wasn’t coming. The storm wasn’t coming. Max had pacified the universe. It wasn’t _Chloe Price_ _must die_ , then. Maybe it was just _no one should use time travel to save a life_.

Somehow that was better and worse, all at once.

The last version of October 11th in Max’s journal was staring up at her, judging her. Spare details, not quite sensible. There were some missing blocks of time, she thought, where maybe Max hadn’t had time to write. (Ah, the irony.) But a handful of frantically scratched notes gave the gist of the last few hours of Max’s life. The party, the drugs, the bunker, a terrible nightmare, and the kiss on the bluff below the lighthouse.

She felt sick.

Chloe flipped the page over and found a single note scribbled directly in the middle of the next page. It was written a bit sideways, and the page was splotchy with dried marks from tears, or maybe rain.

Maybe both.

 

_don’t you forget about me, Chloe Price. I’m so sorry._

_I love you._


End file.
